What a precious boy I have...I love him so much...and this has been the hardest thing I have ever experienced since pushing him out almost 4 years ago...You may have read my previous post which I wrote last year and just posted. It talks about some of my feelings during the thick of training.Warning:: Potty talk is going to be very prevalent in this post!
I would say now that Harrison is mostly potty trained. He doesn't wet his pants (well, sometimes if he's playing too hard and doesn't want to take a break), and he doesn't poop in his pants anymore. But, we still have a long road to go.
Potty training was never going to be easy with him. I should have known. I did know. Hindsight is 20/20 right? I hesitated to write on the blog because I knew it would just be a snidbit of the nightmare I was experiencing...well-meaning moms who had no idea what was going on would offer more advice. Don't get me wrong, I was asking for advice, but from people who were walking through it with me, not someone who just heard about my plight for the first time.
You see, when we moved to China, Harrison stopped eating and pooping. I see now that it was his coping mechanism with all the change...and yes, a 2 year old can control things...2 things...eating and poop. H would go 10 or 11 days without pooping. So, it was not necessarily the potty training that was the problem...it was his colon.
He got pee down after 7 weeks. He is so good at peeing in the potty, he really only has had a few accidents since then, and I can count on one hand how many times he has wet the bed. Rare. But, because we hated the enemas and he hated the potty, he would hold his poop. As I said in my previous post, we used Miralax, which is truly a miracle, but you have to pump them full of it and it does just make the poop fall out. So, we had a lot of poopy undies (he refused to wear diapers or pull-ups, remember?) But, as crazy as it was, I was grateful to clean poopy undies, because that meant he was pooping!
Over time, his body didn't recognize the cues of needing to go. His stomach would swell up like a little starving child. He wouldn't eat as much when he was full of poo, and his attitude would get worse and worse. He and I would both get worked up. During the summer, I let Brett take over and he did great. Harrison was sitting on the potty and pooping! Yet, then we would wait a few days (too long) and the fear of pain would creep back in.
We visited a pediatric gastro in Thailand and he was wonderful! He gave us some new medicine and a poop chart (which, yes, has diagrams of poop on it...Brett LOVES it!) And we are pumping him full of meds and trying to get him to eat well and drink lots. He now sits on the potty every day at least once (this has been since the beginning of December...this is HUGE...he actually agrees to go sit on the potty. No screaming, no kicking, no "I don't want you, Mommy!") And I do whatever he wants...I let him take a bag full of toys, I give him goldfish on the potty, etc...and he has been doing so good. The doctor said it would take about a year to teach his colon how to contract again and to shrink to normal size, but we have to be on him, so that he will not require surgery.
And he has done SO well! Actually, the past few days he has not gone, which makes me a little nervous, because as he gets backed up, the fear of pain creeps back in, and the fight gets stronger. I cannot tell you the number of days where he is sitting on the potty and I'm sitting on the floor and we are both sobbing...me holding his face in my hands telling him I love him so much, and him saying, "But, mommy, I'm scared...get it out, please get it out! I can't do it!" I can't tell you how many times we have spanked or given time outs for him getting off the potty...or how many times I have told him that he has to poop or else I will take him to the doctor and the doctor will have to take the poo poo out. I have also read him so many stories to keep him on the potty, sung to him, rapped to him (I mean, I DID go to North Atlanta high school--I've got soul!), danced for him, quoted scripture to him, etc. It has been so hard, and I know it's not over yet. Every time we do well, then he skips a few days and we are back at square one.
So many moms said to me when I started potty training and tried to share my woes, "Don't worry, he will not go to his senior prom in diapers." Well, DUH! If one more person says that to me, I will flip my lid. I know he won't wear a diaper when he's 18, but it was more than that...it was his will, and his body that was messed up. It has been a year, and it will be much longer. I would say he is trained, but he still doesn't tell us if he has to poo poo, and he still says he doesn't want to go potty.
As I write this, I'm crying a bit thinking of how awful our bathroom experience has been. I have been so embarrassed at times, I have thought I was a horrible mom, thought I had failed. I have thought that I did this to him, that I should have not let him go as long as he did...did I ruin his colon? I was so discouraged at times, and I am sure I will be in the future. There were days a year ago, that I would wake up and immediately start crying as I didn't know if I could handle one more day of the fight. Doesn't this sound ridiculous? Well, it was so, so real. And so, so hard. And it is a reality for us, and I know I can't go back and change things I did, so I have to do things differently now and trust that God will heal our sweet guy!
But, my little man is a tender warrior. He is so extremely sensitive, and although I fear at times that he will get walked all over, he has fight in him. He now tells me everyday, "Mommy, I won't hold it today." And if I ask him if he is scared, he says, "No mommy, God is with me." I ask him if it hurts, and he says, "No mommy, God is with me." I have had the joy of teaching him one or two verses through it all, and I pray he will remember that Brett and I sat on the floor of our nasty chinese bathroom and prayed for him, and I hope that this whole situation won't send him into the looney bin!
So, there you have it, a bit of an update on the bowels of my eldest. I am sorry if it was too much information, but you were fairly warned. Somehow, I have (almost) survived, and I hope that it only gets better from here. I remember a friend here telling me when I started potty training that it took her a year and I thought, "that will never happen to me." and here I am, a year later.
Never say never!
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